California is swarming with fugitives, bail jumpers and scofflaws who roam the streets without fear of arrest -- despite the warrants hanging over their heads.

The numbers are staggering. The state has a backlog of more than 2.5 million unserved warrants for felony and misdemeanor crimes. Most are for minor offenses, but tens of thousands of those warrants are for people wanted for violent crimes, including more than 2,600 outstanding homicide warrants.

And in most cases, nobody is even looking for them. Not the cops, not the sheriffs' deputies, not the highway patrol.

"These numbers are startling and disturbing and represent a serious defect in the criminal justice system," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer told The Chronicle.

"It breeds disrespect for the law ... and exposes innocent people to criminal behavior," he said.

But local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have largely abandoned the job of serving warrants in all but the most serious cases.

"The outstanding warrant list ... has the very guys who are beating up their wives, the very guys who are driving drunk, the very guys who are casing your neighborhood to burglarize your homes at night," said San Diego Judge Larry Stirling.

Experts say that failure to serve warrants -- court-ordered commands to arrest people -- undermines the criminal justice system, threatens public safety and costs the government hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollected fines.

In San Francisco, David Silva had a long history of drug convictions. On December 29, the 45-year-old homeless man failed to appear in Municipal Court for sentencing on a new set of possession charges. Judge Wallace Douglass issued a felony bench warrant for his arrest.

But the warrant was never served. Ten weeks later, the body of 86-year-old Velma Studendorf was found inside her Mission Terrace home in San Francisco. She had been raped and beaten to death.

Silva, whom Studendorf had apparently befriended, allowing him to store belongings in her garage, immediately became the prime suspect. He was arrested several days later and, after DNA testing was conducted, charged with murder. Police sources now say Silva is being investigated in connection with yet another slaying.

San Francisco police say they simply do not have the staff to serve bench warrants -- and virtually every other law enforcement agency in the state finds itself in the same position.

"Nobody has the manpower for the multitudes" of bench warrants, said San Francisco police spokesman Sherman Ackerson.

Overwhelmed and understaffed, law enforcement agencies argue they have more pressing priorities than serving hundreds of thousands of warrants for such minor offenses as skipping a sentencing hearing in a drug possession case.

But as the Silva case may show, and countless others have demonstrated, no one knows when a petty criminal could turn violent.

In California, felony and misdemeanor warrants are entered into state and regional computer-tracking systems. The hope is that during routine traffic stops or in the course of another investigation, officers can run background checks that will disclose any outstanding warrants. They can then take the suspects into custody.

But critics charge this "chance encounter" approach plays fast and loose with public safety, allowing suspects to remain free, potentially to commit new crimes. Police, in effect, are counting on new criminal acts, if only to be given a second chance to catch the suspects. "What we're saying to offenders is that you can acquire a warrant for any number of reasons, and unless you happen to get picked up on another charge, (the warrant) is essentially meaningless," said David Kennedy, senior researcher at Harvard University's Program on Criminal Justice and Management.

Not only do suspected criminals remain at large, but they also often can escape justice entirely. Thousands of cases are dismissed on constitutional grounds every year -- simply because police delayed or failed to serve the warrants.

Meanwhile, California's failure to serve outstanding warrants -- and to collect the fines associated with them -- is costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Last year, California courts collected more than $1 billion in fines and forfeitures, and experts say the state's more than 2.5 million unserved warrants represent a potentially huge source of revenue for law enforcement.

California's criminal justice system has not always been inundated by unserved warrants. Police, sheriffs' deputies and marshals once fanned out across communities, serving warrants on their beats as part of their daily routine.

"In those older days, if you didn't come in on your speeding ticket, they went out and got you," said Judge Sam Mesnick, who served as a Bay Municipal Court judge in Richmond from 1983 until his retirement in 1997.

But times have changed, and myriad factors have spawned a vast swamp of warrants that now mires the criminal justice system.

Sorting out the causes is not easy, but the first one experts invariably point to is the dramatic rise in crime that began over 30 years ago and has only recently abated. Between 1960 and 1991, murder rates nearly doubled across the nation, while robberies and rapes increased more than 300 percent, according to FBI statistics.

As arrests increased, jails became overcrowded. To cope, judges, instead of locking up suspects, often released them without bail with a promise to return for their next court date. For their part, police, rather than arrest minor offenders, issued citations and then released the suspects with the same expectation.

When suspects failed to appear for their court dates, judges issued bench warrants instructing police to take the suspects into custody. But this caused the number of warrants to balloon, and the police did not have the time or the staff to serve them all.

"The skeleton in the closet for law enforcement agencies is the fact that on lower-level crimes, if you're arrested and let free, you can walk off and not go to court and nobody's going to go out and arrest you," says Contra Costa District Attorney Gary Yancey.

Suspects soon caught on. Realizing that warrants had become virtually meaningless as an instrument of the law, they simply ignored them.

Williams had served prison time for robbery and burglary, then was paroled into Alameda County in May 1991. The following month, he skipped a meeting with his parole officer, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

For more than seven years, Williams remained at large. The state Department of Corrections, which runs the prisons and goes after parole violators, said Williams was not a high priority case among the state's 20,000 parole violators.

"We'll put our bang for the buck on the person with the most risk," said department spokesman Steve Shroeder. "That means sex offenders, violent felons, people who have used deadly weapons."

Then, last October, Williams and two others were accused of going on a brutal six-week crime spree, allegedly attacking a series of women in the Bay Area and Southern California.

One of the victims was 58-year-old Alice Tennyson, who was kidnapped on November 17 as she stepped out of her car across the street from her office at the U.S. Treasury Department in San Francisco.

For three days, Williams and his associates allegedly kept her bound, gagged and blindfolded -- often in the trunk -- before finally dumping her in Laguna Beach, bound to a park bench with duct tape.

Tennyson told a reporter she had not known that Williams, who was arrested in Los Angeles after a high-speed car chase, had long been wanted for parole violation -- but that the warrant for his arrest had never been served.

"You're kidding," she said.

Then, after a pause, she said: "That means if he had been in custody, this might not have happened." -- -- --

No one in California knows exactly how many unserved warrants there are. It is an orphaned issue, with no state agency responsible for keeping an accurate tally.

"Even within a single jurisdiction people may not have a count of their own warrant records," said Harvard's Kennedy.

The best statewide estimate comes from the California Board of Corrections, which each quarter polls all 58 counties to determine the number of unserved warrants. But more than a dozen counties do not participate, leaving the department to make an educated guess.

Those Board of Corrections estimates show that despite a sharply dropping crime rate, the number of unserved warrants in California has remained relatively stable, declining only about 4 percent since the beginning of 1996 to 2,595,335 at the end of last year.

The board does not break down warrants by type of crime. But the California Department of Justice has a database of 680,000 people wanted on warrants, and this provides a clearer picture of that population.

Most are being sought for serious misdemeanor offenses, but almost 223,000 individuals are wanted on felony warrants, including more than 74,000 for possession or sale of dangerous drugs; 39,000 for violating probation or parole; 6,600 for assault; and 1,400 for rape.

Other states are also inundated with unserved warrants. Texas has 132,000 outstanding felony and "serious misdemeanor" warrants, while Florida records 323,000.

The Bay Area has about 238,000 outstanding felony and misdemeanor warrants, according to reports from the nine counties. San Francisco County accounts for about 28,000, roughly corresponding to its 12 percent share of the Bay Area population.

The warrants are filed away in Room 460 at the Hall of Justice, along with more than 50,000 unserved warrants for traffic violations.

There in the county's Central Warrant Bureau, the misdemeanor warrants are alphabetically arranged in a bank of mammoth Rolodex trays, whereas the felonies are housed in green file cabinets. Between 80 and 100 new warrants come into the bureau every day.

Thumbing through one of the misdemeanor trays at random, a reporter quickly spots packets of yellow warrant cards bound together by rubber bands, identifying suspects wanted on multiple warrants. A casual search locates one suspect with 28 warrants, all but three issued for failing to appear for court dates.

Most warrants are for minor offenses, including thousands issued to the homeless for drinking out of an open container, urinating in public, camping in city parks and other low-level crimes.

But there are also 12,000 unserved felony warrants. In a random sample of 100 of them, The Chronicle found that most were for the sale or possession of drugs. But the sample also included warrants for other offenses, including burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and having sex with a minor.

Fifty-one of the warrants in the random sample were issued in 1995 or before. More than a dozen were from the 1970s and '80s.

The ages of the warrants seem to prove what everyone is willing to admit: In all but the most serious cases, only a handful of San Francisco's 2,100 police officers is actively serving warrants.

It is the worst-kept secret on the street.

Just a few blocks from the Hall of Justice, on Sixth Street, a bare-chested young manwith an unsteady walk acknowledges that he had had several bench warrants out on him in the past stemming from drug cases.

"No city cop is going to kick down the door to go looking for you unless you raped or murdered someone," he says. "If you get picked up, it all depends on their mood, your behavior and how full the jail is."

A few blocks into the Tenderloin, another young man leaning against the brick facade of residential hotel readily admits to having an outstanding felony warrant, although he declines to say what for.

"It's not a problem," he says, his smile revealing the absence of front teeth. "It's just the environment we hang in."

"If you have a felony murder warrant, they'll go after you," he says. "Otherwise, they just drive by and pick you up if they want to.

"It's just the inconvenience of not knowing when."

California law requires law enforcement agencies to serve all warrants, no matter what type of crime they are issued for. But the sheer volume of the state's outstanding warrants makes serving all of them effectively impossible.

Police and sheriff's departments around the state have been forced to make tough choices: Go after warrant scofflaws or assign officers to other, more immediate priorities, such as responding to 911 calls, expanding domestic violence units or adding to gang task forces.

The result: Staffing for warrants details has been cut back.

Six years ago, for example, eight officers were assigned to the Oakland warrants detail. Now only four are in the unit. Twenty years ago, the San Francisco police had a unit of 25 officers who served warrants, mostly for parking and moving violations. That was in addition to a several-person fugitive detail. Now, the city has only two full-time warrants officers and another officer who tracks out-of-state fugitives.

"Police departments have gone more toward work that is tangible and immediately productive," said Sergeant Thomas Parisi, head of San Francisco's Fugitive Unit. "Working warrants is man-hour intensive. Say you have a guy come back who sat for four hours on a misdemeanor warrant case, waiting for that individual to show up at his last address. The guy's got no productivity. It's easier to say I responded to 10 calls for service on my shift." Budget concerns also make some police and sheriff's departments reluctant to notify the state's Wanted Persons System when warrants are issued for suspects wanted for low-level crimes.

That is because listing a suspect with that system obligates counties to pay transportation costs to return the suspect for prosecution. If the individual is caught at the other end of the state, transportation costs can easily run into hundreds of dollars.

Most felony warrants are on the system, but in some counties warrants for serious misdemeanors, which can include spousal abuse and drunken driving, are never entered.

Moreover, when the court issues a warrant for a low-level crime, it is rare that a copy, or even notice, is sent back to the station house. So cops on the street and those on warrant details often do not get the word that a warrant has been issued.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of warrants cannot be served -- because, for all practical purposes, the police do not even know they exist. -- -- --

The wholesale failure to serve warrants is more than a threat to public safety. At a time when law enforcement cries out for more funding, it is a missed financial opportunity, as well.

Experts say hundreds of millions of dollars in fines go uncollected. Nearly 80 percent of the state's unserved warrants have fines attached to them, and judges have a tool to help them collect that money.

Since 1985, California judges have had the authority to levy $250 civil assessments in addition to the original fines when suspects in low-level crimes fail to appear in court.

Instead of issuing a bench warrant, a judge can impose the assessment. If the assessment is paid, the case is closed and no court appearance is necessary. But suspects who fail to pay the assessment and the fine are turned over to collection agencies, rather than the police.

In 1994, San Diego became the first county to routinely invoke the law, and the results were swift and conclusive. Four years ago, the county had a backlog of 750,000 outstanding warrants. Now, the county has about 120,000.

Last year, the county collected more than $15.8 million under the law -- $7.5 million from fines and $8.2 million from the civil assessments.

"It's efficient. It's self-funding. It's just," says Judge Stirling. "The real measure is that if we have a warrant, it's because we want the guy."

But the law is little used, largely because many judges have never heard of it.

"What's the statute?" asked veteran San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lucy McCabe when told of the law by a reporter.

After reading the statute, McCabe said she was intrigued, noting that she thought it might work in some traffic cases. But she also said that in many other misdemeanor cases, the offender does not have enough money to pay the original fine, let alone the additional one.

Another local judge, who did not want his name used, said he was not aware of the law either but still preferred a bench warrant because he wanted the suspect back in his court rather than getting off with a fine. -- -- --

The overwhelming backlog of unserved warrants, in effect, encourages suspects and criminals to defy the courts, according to some law enforcement experts.

"How can you argue that (the failure to serve warrants) would not embolden a criminal to commit minor crimes?" asked Robert Kochly, the chief deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County. "There's no respect for the system."

One of the most obvious symptoms of contempt for the criminal justice system is the individual who carries multiple warrants -- and openly flouts them while continuing to commit crimes.

Take the case of 26-year-old Joseph Desantiago, a reputed South Bay gang member with a long criminal history, who goes by the nicknames "Spray" and "Deadeye."

Earlier this year, Desantiago, who has two eyeballs tattooed on the back of his head and "666" on his forehead, was wanted again -- this time on a narcotics warrant and a no-bail felony warrant for violating his probation.

But San Jose police failed to serve the warrants, allowing Desantiago to remain at large.

Then on January 14, Desantiago allegedly began drinking with friends while driving around Palo Alto and Menlo Park. That evening, they headed south on East Bayshore, next to Highway 101, weaving through traffic and allegedly randomly spraying other motorists with gunfire.

"Anybody who would not get out of the way, they would take pot shots at," said Palo Alto Detective Adrian Moore, who investigated the case.

A terrified witness took down Desantiago's license number and called the police. At that point, Palo Alto and San Jose police finally made an effort to find Desantiago, who was well known, if only for his tattoos, in the San Jose area.

A few weeks later, police caught up with Desantiago and arrested him after a high-speed car chase. He is now in Santa Clara County Jail, charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in either incident.

A spokeswoman for the Palo Alto police explained why Desantiago had not been sought earlier.

"It would be a beautiful world if we could serve every petty theft warrant we get," said Detective Lori Kratzer. "But you have to establish priorities. You've got to work your biggest cases. Anything else would be negligent."

But to Steve Ferdin, a San Jose policeman who, in his off hours, produces a television program about fugitives for a local cable channel, the Desantiago case illustrates the growing disrespect for the courts -- and the threat to public safety these unserved warrants pose.

Sure, the Desantiago case turned out all right, Ferdin said. "But the garden-variety warrants are just not being sought. If we would just serve the warrants we have, heaven only knows what grief we would save society."

WHY WARRANTS ARE NOT SERVED

Peace officers attempt to serve arrest warrants in high-profile crimes such as homicide, but most felony and misdemeanor warrants go unserved. The main reasons law enforcement agencies do not serve lower-level warrants include:

-- Other Priorities

Law officers say 911 calls, gang task forces and community policing have become top priorities. The time-consuming job of serving warrants has fallen out of favor. -- Staffing Cuts

Warrant details, fugitive task forces and marshals have been cut to the bone in many jurisdictions. -- Communication Breakdowns

In many cases, peace officers never receive notice that a particular warrant has been issued. -- Inadequate Computer Systems

Almost three-quarters of the warrants issued in California are not entered on the statewide warrants database.

-- Sheer Volume

The millions of unserved warrants that have accumulated over the years have simply overwhelmed law enforcement agencies.

Steve Kearsley / The Chronicle

GLOSSARY

Warrant: A court order, signed by a judge, commanding law enforcement to arrest an individual and bring him or her before the court.

Arrest warrant: A warrant, often requested by a peace officer or district attorney, for the arrest of an individual wanted in connection with a crime.

Bench warrant: Judges issue bench warrants for an individual who has failed to appear for a court appearance.

Department of Corrections: The state agency responsible for running California's prison system and supervising parolees. The DOC's parolee-at-large program goes after parolees who have violated their parole or committed new crimes.

Department of Justice: The state's chief law enforcement agency operates the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CELTS), a network of databases that contain information about felons and suspects.

Wanted Persons System: A database maintained by the Department of Justice and tracks individuals with outstanding warrants.

Automated Warrant Sytem: A regional database for tracking outstanding warrants issued by Alameda, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, as well as the city of Benicia.

TOMORROW

California has fallen back on a controversial high-risk, low- percentage strategy for serving warrants that allows suspects to remain at large indefinitely. Massachusetts launches sweeping reform of its warrants system after the tragic death of a Boston policeman.

CALIFORNIA'S AT-LARGE POPULATION
California is inundated
with more than 2.5 million unserved warrants - legal commands
by the courts to take an individual into custody. Most of the
warrants are for minor offenses, but tens of thousands are for
violent crimes such as murder, rape and assault. Almost no one
is looking for these warrant scofflaws, who prowl the streets
without fear of arrest.
CALIFORNIA
Total unserved felony and misdemeanor warrants: 2.5 million
No one in California keeps an
accurate count of how many unserved warrants exist. This is
an estimate by the California Board of Corrections, which polled
the state's counties, as of December 1998.
Wanted persons: 681,668
California's Department of Justice maintains a Wanted Persons
System database, but it tracks only individuals being sought on
felonies and "serious" misdemeanor warrants, as of February 1999.
Wanted felony suspects: 222,868
Individuals listed
with the Wanted Persons System for outstanding felony warrants,
as of February 1999.
SELECTED FELONY WARRANTS
Individuals listed with the Wanted Persons System for
various outstanding felony warrants, as of February 1999.
.
Outstanding warrants
Homicide 2,690
Kidnapping 530
Sexual assault 1,470
Assault 6,699
Robbery 3,854
Burglary 13,205
Fraud 9,742
Dangerous drugs 74,017
Sex offenses 3,030
Weapons/explosions 2,498
Parole violation 20,671
BAY AREA
Outstanding warrants provided by county sheriffs and the Automated
Warrants System, as of February 1999.
.
Outstanding Outstanding
felony misdemeanor
County warrants warrants
.
Alameda 4,876 27,598
Contra Costa 2,112 39,688
Marin -- --
Napa -- --
San Francisco 12,241 16,036
San Mateo 2,135 26,658
Santa Clara -- 35,739
Solano -- --
Sonoma 1,350 19,884
.
-- Indicates that counties may not have
current statistics on warrant records.
WANTED PERSONS BY SELECTED FELONIES IN THE BAY AREA
Outstanding warrants listed by the Wanted Persons System, as
of February 1999.
.
Type of Contra San San Santa
crime Alameda/Costa/Marin/Napa/Francisco/Mateo/Clara/Solano/Sonoma
.
Homicide 27 18 1 1 20 35 63 4 13
Kidnapping 5 6 1 1 8 12 17 3 0
Sexual
assault 12 10 0 4 21 19 43 8 22
Robbery 15 42 7 1 84 19 34 15 8
Assault 34 52 41 18 238 40 128 57 37
Fraud 428 103 55 16 483 36 313 117 113
Dangerous
drugs 104 332 259 17 5,605 94 599 27 163
Sex
offenses 27 28 10 10 34 37 113 29 3
Weapons 9 22 4 1 37 9 18 14 10
.
NOTE: This is not
a complete list of warrants for the Bay Area. It includes only
warrants deemed serious enough by counties to put on the state
Wanted Persons System database.
TOP COUNTIES WITH UNSERVED WARRANTS
Outstanding warrants correlate
closely to population. California has more outstanding warrants
than any other state. The most populous counties tend to have
more unserved warrants than smaller counties. But getting an
exact tally is impossible. The state polls each county, but
many counties make only estimates, while others do not keep
track at all. Only a few jurisdictions claim to have precise
figures for outstanding warrants.
.
San Bernardino 67,839
Los Angeles 939,813
San Diego 120,621
Ventura 88,144
Kern 44,065
Riverside 179,522
Sacramento 91,195
Fresno 133,449
Orange 205,387
UNSERVED WARRANTS IN THE BAY AREA
Outstanding felony and misdemeanor warrants provided by
county sheriffs and Automated Warrants System database. Numbers
are estimated in Napa and Solano counties, February 1999.
.
Alameda 32,474
Contra Costa 41,800
Marin 12,500
Napa 25,000
Santa Clara 36,102
Solano 12,500
Sonoma 21,234
San Francisco 28,277
San Mateo 28,793
.
Number of felony and misdemeanor warrants in the 9 Bay Area counties:
238,000
Sources: California
Department of Justice; Wanted Persons System; Automated Warrants
System; California Board of Corrections
.
Reported by Kenneth Howe, graphics by Steve Kearsley / The Chronicle